Isakhel

Isakhel lay in the trans-Indus country west of Mianwali, associated with the Isa Khel section of the Niazi Afghans. The history of the wider territory preceded the town laid out in the early nineteenth century. Local chiefs maintained their position amid the weakening of Durrani authority and the competing ambitions of neighbouring rulers.

In 1818 the Nawab of Mankera annexed the Isakhel territory. Three years later he surrendered it to the Sikhs after a siege of Mankera, bringing the region into Maharaja Ranjit Singh's expanding sphere. The town itself was founded, or refounded, around 1830 by Ahmad Khan, an ancestor of its later chiefs. Its formation thus belonged to a period in which local Niazi leadership survived through changes in superior authority. The distinction between the older tribal territory and Ahmad Khan's town is essential: the place's early-nineteenth-century urban foundation did not mark the beginning of the communities that gave the district its identity.